Gallaudet picks 1953 graduate as president

By TIMES WIRES
Published December 11, 2006

Gallaudet University on Sunday named Robert Davila, a former assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education, as its interim president after a year marked by student protests over leadership at the nation's premier college for the deaf. Davila, 74, who graduated from Gallaudet in 1953, was approved by trustees following a monthlong review of candidates that students praised as more inclusive than the process that chose former provost Jane Fernandes, who had been due to take office next month. She was opposed by students and faculty who said she wasn't sufficiently supportive of sign language.

Excommunicated cleric ordains two

An excommunicated Roman Catholic archbishop continued his defiance of the Vatican on Sunday when he ordained two married men as priests. At the Trinity Reformed Church, Raymond A. Grosswirth of Rochester, N.Y., and Dominic Riccio of Newark were installed by Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who himself was married in 2001. The Vatican excommunicated Milingo after he installed four married men as bishops in September.

Pentagon inquiry sought over video

A military watchdog group is asking the Defense Department to investigate whether seven Army and Air Force officers violated regulations by appearing in uniform in a 10-minute promotional video for an evangelical Christian organization, the Christian Embassy. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group led by retired Air Force lawyer Michael Weinstein, requested an investigation in a letter to the Defense Department's inspector general.

Elsewhere

CHICAGO: Mayor Richard M. Daley is expected to declare his candidacy today for a sixth term as he seeks to vault past his late father's record for longevity. If he is victorious and serves out the full term, Daley, 64, would have 22 years in office. That would just surpass the record of 21 years and seven months set by his mentor and father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley.

SEATAC, WASH.: All nine Christmas trees have been removed from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport instead of adding a giant Jewish menorah to the holiday display as a rabbi had requested. After consulting with lawyers, port staff believed that adding the menorah would have required adding symbols for other religions and cultures in the Northwest, said airport spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt.

FLORENCE, COLO.: Eric Rudolph, imprisoned for the bombing of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and three other bombings, laments in a series of letters to a newspaper that the maximum security federal prison where he is spending the rest of his life is designed to drive him insane. "It is a closed-off world designed to isolate inmates from social and environmental stimuli," he wrote in one letter to the Gazette of Colorado Springs.